Health acculturation and type 2 diabetes management among Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and Latino adult immigrants in the US

Abstract

Diabetes management is a major part of treatment but many ethnic/racial minorities with type 2 diabetes do not make the needed adjustment. A key component of healthcare access is health acculturation, defined as a level of success in navigating the mainstream healthcare system. The overall goal of this study is to develop a measure of health acculturation and examine its relationship with diabetes management across several ethnic minority groups in the US. The first purpose is to investigate the relationship between health acculturation and type 2 diabetes management behaviors in a sample of foreign-born Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Latino adults. The second purpose is to assess ethnic differences by testing the interaction between health acculturation and ethnicity on diabetes management behaviors. Merged dataset from CHIS 2009 and 2011-2 were used for analysis. Multiple and logistic regression analysis revealed that those with high health acculturation skills performed more diabetes management than their counterparts. Latinos performed better than all Asian subgroups on most diabetes management behaviors regardless of the level of health acculturation. The study has implications for social workers and healthcare providers working with ethnic and minority populations. The results suggest that the health acculturation measure would be a good screening tool to identify immigrant populations who will most benefit from health intervention within the culture of western medicine. In addition, the results help to identify specific skills and tools needed by social workers and healthcare providers to better serve these populations.